Harley Benton ST-Modern HH Plus Daphne Blue

-Out of the box: Not a scratch, ding, blemish. Frets edges nicely rounded. Action a little high for my liking. (easy fix)

-It looks great, better than the white washed pictures. It is real Daphne blue.

-My neck is a little "flamey" and feels, smooth and fast.

-I got a nice Laurel fretboard.

I never had a Babicz FCH Z Bridge before and I like it. Setup was super easy, lowered the string height to taste (1.5 mm at 12th) with no fret buzz. Tuning stability is good. Playability and feel isn't different compared to any other bridge.

-The tuners themselves are ...OK... some are smoother than others.

-This is good value, especially since I've played it every day since I got it. I keep going to it.

Thanks!

I Can’t fault the guitar I was sent by Thomann. The fit and finish was spot on and I was really blown away by how good the HB locking tuners are so smooth and held tune rock solid. Mine was set up great and was done prior to shipping so played great from the start.

The neck feels great and was very smooth and I actually like the babicz bridge. 12-16 radius feels great I always like 12” radius and this didn’t feel much different.

I Also love that it’s a hard tail more ST style guitars should be hard Tails.

The only reason I returned the item is 1. The pick ups are far too hot for me and I will wait for the Strat equivalent to come into stock and also the pickups are rather ugly with the black big pole pieces.

2. I don’t like how the frets have been rounded off prefer standard frets how they are finished on 99% or guitars. I can’t say wether the frets were all level as I didn’t go that far into checking but with the out of the box action I had no buzzing or dead spots.

If hot pickups are for you or you want to change the pick ups then this is for you but for more single coil players wait for the ST modern S/S/H to come In stock because playability was spot on and a lot of guitar for the money. Be great to see the hard tail version with the standard Strat pick up configuration I would buy that in an instant.